


Four Times Ashe Needed Help and One She Didn't

by katrani



Category: Thrilling Intent (Web Series)
Genre: Anxiety, Bittersweet, Depression, F/F, F/M, Hope spot, Mental Breakdown, Multi, cuddlng
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-31
Updated: 2016-05-31
Packaged: 2018-07-11 10:25:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7044589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katrani/pseuds/katrani
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ashe relies on her friends, until she literally can't anymore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Some of this was written at different times than the rest, so it might not flow completely well. Also assume multi-shipping and that Ashe is just with everyone here.

**i.**

Ashe is mostly used to her powers, mostly resigned to what using them means. But sometimes she wakes with nightmares of emptiness in her mind, no longer friendly with her teammates or able to relate to them, nightmares of just going through the motions of being alive. Or worse, ones of being monstrous and skeletal and mossy, a giant god that inspires awe and fear but never anything like affection.  
  
When those nights happen, she jolts awake,  peels off her pajamas, and runs her fingers along her bindings with a small spark of power. Makes sure they’re still there, still thrumming with a bit of energy. She touches each finger to her cheeks, makes sure all ten are there and the right size, that her sword and writing callouses haven’t been replaced with solid stone. She runs her hands through her hair, feels its softness and the sharp pain of tugging on it; pulls her knees to her chest to make sure her legs are human too; hums her song to  herself to keep her thoughts from spiraling too far out.  
  
When she starts spending nights with Thog, things are calm for a while. He’s good at making her feel safe and happy, so the nightmares take a few weeks to return. When they do, the first time, he snaps awake next to her and tries to hold her, treats it like he would someone having an anxiety attack. She pushes him off and in her panic adds a bit of lightning to it, giving him a small burn on his chest that takes two weeks to heal. After that, he just sits and waits, and only pulls her to him once she’s stopped humming to herself.  
  
But he hates being so useless, and the sixth time it happens, he’s determined to help her feel better faster. “Aesling,” he says as he sits up, his voice quieter and softer than usual. “Ashe, it’s okay. You’re alright, you haven’t had to use your powers.” He gently reaches out to touch her hand, and when she doesn’t jerk away from him, he folds both of his around it. “See? Normal skin, normal human creases and bumps.” He traces his thumb along some of the lines on her palm. “Normal hands.” He raises her hand to his face, gently kisses the tip of each finger.  
  
She looks at him, her eyes a little unfocused. “You shouldn’t touch me,” is all she says. His slow calm startled her, and she doesn’t quite know how to react. She can’t quite process it. “I’m a monster. I don’t deserve your kindness.”  
  
“It’s not kindness, Ashe.” He lets go of her hand, massages her arm as he moves his hands up to touch her bindings. “It’s truth. See? Everything’s still in place.” He lightly taps each ring on her arm, then brings one hand up to her neck and then her hair, curling a bit of it around his index finger. “You’re still soft and squishy.” He pauses, thinking that it’s weird to say something like that. But Ashe is still looking at him, so he continues. “You’re still you.” He caresses her jawline, then leans in to kiss the edge of her ear. “I promise.”  
  
Ashe takes a deep breath. He wouldn’t lie to her, she knows that. But it’s still so difficult, with a vivid sense of not knowing why humans do the things they do in her mind. “I don’t feel like myself.”  
  
He frowns slightly. He’s not sure what he’s doing, all of this is experimental. But she sounds so empty, so tired, that he has to do what he can to bring her out of it. “It’s okay. I’m here to remind you,” he promises. He touches the side of her neck. “You have a human pulse.” Down into her shirt, pressing gently against the center of her chest. “Human heartbeat.” He shifts closer to her, pulling her closer to him with one arm while using the other hand to tilt her chin up a little. Presses his lips to hers. “Human breathing,” he whispers against her mouth.  
  
“Thog…” Ashe’s voice wobbles, and as he pulls back a bit he can see that she looks about to cry. She wraps her arms around him and buries her face against his chest. “I don’t- you shouldn’t- I’m not…”  
  
It’s the most vulnerable he’s seen her in a while. He sighs, and rubs her back as she cries a little, starts humming that song she always has for herself. When she finally gets her breathing under control and sits up, he stops. “Better?”  
  
“I think so.” She wipes her eyes on her forearm. “Thank you.”  
  
Thog touches his forehead to hers, a little forcefully. “Stop being so stupid, alright? You’re too good to be some kind of monster. Even if you do tend to overreact to things.”  
  
His switch from tenderness to his usual annoyed tone is enough to startle a chuckle out of her. “I’ll try,” Ashe says after a moment. “But if I mess up-”  
  
“I guess I’ll clean up after you,” he says teasingly, a smirk crossing his face. “But only if you play distraction with Markus and Kyr from upgrading the bar for a day.”  
  
“Fine.” She’s quiet a minute, then shifts so she can hug him properly. “Thank you, Thog.”  
  
He squeezes her tightly, then lets go and throws her blanket over her head. “Whatever. Just let me get some rest.”  
  
“Sure thing, boss,” she teases, settling back down into bed. She’s startled a moment later when he rolls over and places one arm around her, drawing her back to him. “What’re you doing?”  
  
“Protecting you.” He kisses the side of her neck as he answers. “Maybe if you have me touching you while you sleep, you’ll remember those of us that’ll stand by you no matter what.”  
  
She closes her eyes, feeling warm and not just from his body pressed against hers. “…I love you, Thog.”  
  
“Love you too, Ashe. Now get some damn sleep.”


	2. Chapter 2

**ii.**

The group returns to the bar, everyone collapsing into seats in various states of disrepair. Ashe is the only that doesn’t, instead taking just long enough to grab a bottle of something and then walking out.

Inien watches her, thoughtful. She stands after a moment, only for Markus to grab her sleeve.

“Probably best not to. That was a hard fight, and whenever we come back from something where she does a lot, she always says to leave her alone if we try and help.” There’s something odd on his face, an old regret maybe.

Inien looks at him. “Maybe for you all,” she says. “But I’ll see for myself.” She follows after Ashe. It takes her a minute, but eventually she finds the Guardian sitting at the base of a tree. The alcohol’s abandonned on the ground, and Ashe has her head in her hands. She’s humming to herself, but the song’s disjointed, spaced by short and sharp breaths.

The witch kneels in front of her. “Aesling?” she says quietly, and gently takes Ashe’s hands. “Are you-”

Ashe flinches back from the contact. Inien sees her face for a moment, pale as the moonlight and eyes wide in fear. Then she curls in on herself even more, and chokes back a sob. “Leave me alone!”

“Oh, Ashe.” Inien forces back the other comment at the tip of her tongue- even her meanness has limits. She picks up the bottle of booze and sits against the tree as well, careful not to touch Ashe again. “You know, if this is about the whole humanity thing again, you really shouldn’t be afraid.” She takes a swig of whatever Ashe grabbed, and almost gags. “Wow, that’s disgusting. You have this regularly? It tastes like wizard swill, which I wouldn’t even use for poisoning someone.” She takes a deep breath, actually trying to think over her words. “Like I said, you shouldn’t be afraid. You do a lot- maybe too much, considering how often you have to save the boys. Even if ‘you’ disappear, they’ll remember that. Those memories have to be worth something, right?”

Ashe takes her own breath, shaky and quiet. “You really suck at this,” she mumbles.

“Yeah well, when someone’s acting even more scared than a hedgehog and pricklier than a wolverine, they can’t be picky with their help.”

Ashe doesn’t answer. They sit there for a few minutes, and Ashe slowly calms down. She holds out her hand, and Inien hands her the alcohol. There’s another few minutes of silence, before she finally breaks it.

“It’s consuming me faster. Every time I use those powers, more of me slips away than last time. And we keep running into bigger and bigger enemies.”

Inien shrugs. “Then they’ll just have to get better. I keep meaning to yell at them for always having you at risk, anyways.”

“Says the one that I had to drag out of range for a fireball five different times in as many minutes.”

“Well, you’re supposed to help me, right? That’s how these things work.”

Ashe actually laughs then, although it’s too loud and too fast, more forced than genuine. “Something like that.” She reaches along the ground until she finds Inien’s hand, and intertwines her fingers wih the witch’s. “Thank you, Inien.”

Inien pushes her hat back, then turns towards her and leans forward. She touches her forehead to Ashe’s, gently. “Just drop the solitary warrior thing, and we’ll call it even,” she answers.


	3. Chapter 3

**iii.**

Things are quiet, for once. Markus and Ashe sit back-to-back, near one of the streams in the woods by the bar. He has a book, and she’s working on some carving, hunched over slightly so that she’s barely touching him. It’s warm, and the wind smells faintly of wildflowers. All in all, a lovely day, and one they both need after a set of rough adventures.

He waits for her to take a break and lean against him more, then reaches back and lightly rests his hand over hers. “How’s it going? Got any splinters for me to help pull out?”

He can practically feel her rolling her eyes. “You always ask that, and when do I ever have any?”

“Never, but I can hope to be your shining knight someday!” he insists, a little too eagerly. They both laugh at that, and fall back into silence. Ashe leans forward again, and he can feel her movements, the slight shifts in her muscles when she turns the carving over to work on a different section or takes a moment to stretch a little and try to correct her posture. It’s almost as calming as the rustle of leaves and the water moving around rocks caught in its current.

It’s calming enough that it takes him a moment to notice the change when she suddenly starts crying. Ashe is quiet about it, but those’re definitely sobs passing through her, and her breathing’s nowhere near as even as it should be. Markus turns around quickly, pulling her back to him in a tight embrace. “Aesling? What’s wrong?”

She starts to say something, but her voice hitches, and she has to take a few moments to take a deep breath or five and try to explain it. She tries again, but then she’s sobbing more heavily, pulling her knees to her chest and burying her face against them.

Markus keeps his arms around her middle, and holds her, and rocks back and forth a little. He starts to hum the song he figured out for her, the one he first heard her sing when she was upset before. That seems to help, a little, at least enough for her crying to become sniffling.

Ashe wipes at her eyes. “Sorry. I know this was supposed to be a relaxing day, but I’m messing it all up.”

“It’s alright,”  Markus insists. He kisses her on the cheek. “Obviously you need to get something off your chest, and who better to tell than me? I am the best listener around, after all.”

“I don’t think you can call yourself that if you have so much ego,” Ashe retorts, and she’s smiling again, even if it’s forced. She tilts her head back so that it’s resting against his chest and she can look up at his face. “I just… I suddenly felt afraid. I’m not getting the same happiness from just being around you that I have before. I did when you held my hand, but until then, it was just like I was spending the day with a friend, and…”

“And you’re scared it means you lost too much?” Markus finishes for her. She nods, and he sighs. “It might not be, you know. It could just be the excitement for us dying down- which isn’t a bad thing. You still feel comfortable, right? Content?” Another nod. He kisses her forehead. “And that’s still a little exciting?” He doesn’t even have to wait for her nod, as her face turns slightly red. “Then I’m not terribly worried. Even if things are a little numb, Ashe, you still have love in you, and that’s enough.”

“And if I lose that?” she whispers, biting her lip.

“Then I’ll help you remember, or find a way to fight that spiritfolk and get back the parts of yourself it’s taken. Afterall, if I can’t reclaim my loves with this heritage, then what use is it?”

Ashe forces another smile. “What, will you demand a refund if you can’t fight what I’m bound to?”

“Brilliant idea! In fact, I think Hell has a certain clause in its contracts- well, the more general ones, it might not be in Tiefling ones. Do you know it is incredibly hard to get the infernal bureaucracy to give up copies of things? And all I want is to do research…”

Ashe closes her eyes, listening to him continue talking. It’s all bravado, she knows he’s just as scared of his heritage’s consequences as she is of her own, he’s just better at hiding it usually. Still, it helps, especially as she feels his voice as much as hears it, leaning against him like this.

“It’s a lovely day,” she says after a few minutes, interrupting him.

He smiles down at her, and leans over to give her a proper kiss. “Indeed it is.”


	4. Chapter 4

**iv.**

Glass clinks heavily against the bar’s surface. “Another,” Ashe demands.

Kyr shakes his head. “I really don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Dammit, I’m finally drinking some of your keer, I’d think you’d want to keep them coming at me.” She holds her hand out imperiously.

He sighs, and reaches for the shelf behind the bar where rows and rows of his own concoctions are kept. He hands her another, and watches her chug it worriedly. It’s late, enough that no one else is awake. He’s spent the last hour and a half watching Ashe drink more and more keer, and in another circumstance he’d be curious about the effects: currently her veins are glowing with a pale light that mirrors her eyes, and faint specks of glitter follow the movement of her fingers. Obviously this is a batch Markus helped with.

But Ashe is also being extremely forceful, and way too eager to keep drinking something she supposedly distrusts. It’s enough to keep Kyr somewhat focused. “You’re not acting like yourself,” he says as she finishes the bottle.

She stiffens slightly at that, and doesn’t meet his eyes. “Haven’t you noticed I’m reckless sometimes?” she asks after a minute of heavy silence. “This is exactly who I am.”

“No it’s not!” Kyr insists. He leans forward, his face level with hers. “You might be rushed sometimes, and jump in when the rest of us fail at fighting a monster, or if you get mad. But you don’t just sit around and have something you hate for no reason! You don’t tough stuff out just to see what’ll happen, or out of boredom.” He reaches for her hand, holding it in both of his. “C'mon Ashe, I’m your friend- well, more than that, now. You can trust me.”

She bites her tongue while he talks, even though she wants to just tell him to fuck off. She’s even opening her mouth to do just that when he touches her, and she pauses again. His hands are warm, and rough from both callouses and various scars. Her fingers rest against the inside of one of his wrists, and she can feel his pulse- quick and earnest, just like his words.

 _Respect what someone’s touch tells you. They can’t hide that, like they might their words or their face._ The old wisdom comes back to her, a Meathian sort of thought that she hasn’t considered in a long while.

Ashe sighs, and pulls away from Kyr so she can fold her hands together and rest them against the bar. “It’s…” She bites her lip. The words don’t want to come out, things she’s barely mentioned to anyone. But he’s right, she should trust him more than she has at this point. “If I drink enough, there’s more numbness. Even if I don’t actually get drunk, my tongue still feels slightly numb and my throat still burns. It’s a threshold, for when I lose things.”

Kyr tilts his head to the side. “Lose things?”

“Myself.” Ashe takes a deep breath. “My powers- they’re… Well, they’re not exactly mine. Do you remember, when we dealt with that deck of cards for Rat, how things felt when you had my abilities?”

Kyr thinks about it for a moment. “Yeah. It was distant, and hard to call on. Like something was fighting me. I just thought I wasn’t used to it, or that maybe you were getting tired and things didn’t recharge when they switched, or maybe that I just wasn’t supposed to have them at all for some reason. Are you saying it wasn’t anything like that?” He wants to keep talking, going over all the possibilities, but he forces himself to quiet and not talk over Ashe. It’s rare enough that she opens up like this, and he doesn’t want to ruin it like he has before.

“Something like that.” Ashe sighs. “I don’t like thinking about it, but I’m essentially using something else’s powers. And when I do, it takes from me. A bit of who I am, all the time.”

Something clicks for Kyr. “So you sitting here and drinking something you hate, just to get a little numb… You’re trying to destroy yourself, before it does? Even just a bit, so you’re in control?” She nods, and he slams his hands against the bar. “Ashe, that’s- bad. Like ridiculously, foolishly bad. Like half of the ideas I’ve ever had bad, like me trying to be a fighter bad.”

She looks up at him, startled. Kyr’s eyes are narrowed at her, and he’s breathing kind of heavily- is he actually angry with her? Her face turns red, her own temper flaring up. “You don’t know what it’s like, to lose bits of yourself-”

“Are you kidding?” he cuts her off. “Everyone died when I was little. I tried to make the most of it, and come up with new ideas to fill the space, but I have nothing besides my name. I still don’t fully comprehend humanity, and I knew nothing but myself before meeting you all! You say you’re losing yourself- well I’ve lost myself too, but I found it all again! It took a while, and it took people  helping me, but I have! At the least you already have people around you to help you find new pieces to replace the old ones, instead of fumbling around like a child in the wildnerness.”

Ashe lets her head thunk against the bar, ashamed. She should remember more, what her companions have gone through. But everyone else is usually cheerful, and it’s easy to forget their own pains. “What if… What if I’m not myself, though?” she whispers. “What if whoever you all help me find isn’t me?”

Kyr calms down a little, and comes around the bar to sit next to her. She hears two soft clinks as he sets something down. “Then we’ll tell you, and let you decide where you want to go from there. Alright? I think that sounds like a good plan, definitely very fair. Here, let’s toast to it.”

She looks up, and sees two more open bottles of keer on the counter. He’s holding one. She takes the other, and they knock their drinks together. “To trusting friends,” she says hesitantly.

“To helping friends,” he says with a smile.

They each knock their drinks back, as the first bits of sunlight filter through the window.


	5. Chapter 5

**v.**

The spiritfolk coils around her, a heavy mist lit from within by green lightning. Slowly, it coalesces, its skin like bark and stone and its fur like autumn leaves. For just a moment, its eyes are the treacherous blue of a spring sky, one that will cloud over in an instant- then they shift, and she drops her gaze before she can see herself in them.

Ashe knows she’s alone here within herself. No one can stand with her, to give her a boostie or act as a distraction. She stands still as she watches the spirit. It’s always frightened her, but now, clinging to the last shreds of her humanity? She can’t back down.

“Why keep fighting?” the spirit says, sizing her up. It’s patient, always, and loves to taunt her. She knows she’s lost more of herself than needed at times, falling into its traps and reacting in rage or despair.

She takes a breath, and meets its eyes for once. That’s the one trait they share right now, golden eyes that pierce through everything. “Because I won’t be the one to set you free.”

It laughs at her, cold and deep as mountain roots. Ashe tries not to recoil from the noise. “Even now, you think you have a choice? When I have taken so much of you already, more than any others? I am the land itself, everlasting and growing! Soil and rock and tree, beasts and tides. What are you? Bone and flesh? You are a jar, little Guardian, and I will shatter you. You are nothing before me.”

“No.” Her voice is clear, even though she’s shaking. Ashe holds onto what’s gotten her this far: Markus’ support and Inien pushing her to do better, Thog’s wary trust and Gregor’s stubborn friendship, Kyr’s gentleness, Kyl'il’s understanding and Charoth’s calm. She takes some amount of strength from it, but it’s distant, not at all as comforting as it should be.

The spirit shudders and inhales deeply, as if savoring something. As if it can feel the happiness Ashe should when thinking of her friends. She can’t be happy anymore, but she still has something left. One thought that rings through her entire being.

She has to protect all of her friends, everything they’ve given her. “You want to know what I am?” she taunts the spirit, her voice unwavering. “I am made of love, from all of them!” She draws her sword. “And that…” Her eyes blaze as she walks towards the spiritfolk, unafraid and stubborn.

“And that has to be stronger than you!”


End file.
